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Iowa Politics with Jeff Stein — Tue. Aug. 11, 2020

By Tim Martin Aug 11, 2020 | 5:46 AM

Any Body But Them

I was made aware of a current country song, recorded by a young man named Travis Denning, from an album entitled, “Beer’s Better Cold”. That’s a pretty good start. The song tells the story of a man who breaks up with his girlfriend, and when she asks if there’s someone else, he says yes…and that her name is Abby, which stands for Any Body But You. Pretty clever, although a bit pointed.

Reminds me of Americans going to the polls this November…they’re looking for any body but the names on the ballot.

This is not to suggest that it’s going to be a bad year for incumbents…I’m saying this is going to be more of a “pox on all your houses” year, where the partisanship has gotten so bad, the major parties so extreme, that it’s going to turn off a lot of people who might just stay home rather than contribute to the madness.

But that’s what the parties want…so they can continue to control things.

You’ll be very sick of the whole campaign by the time we vote; you may have just about gotten your fill of it already. And that’s fine. But not participating would be the exact wrong response.

Yes, you may feel that each side…no matter the race…is not promoting what they would do, so much as ripping their opponent. Completely true, and worse than ever. Rather than aspirational messages, we instead hear that however bad this person is, the other side is worse. Talk about feeding into the “lesser of two evils” narrative.

But unless we all show up and vote, we have no chance of things ever changing. It starts there, and moves to being active in between elections, too. It’s not for the faint of heart, true political activism…but those on the extremes have no problem working to be the loudest voice, leading to change. Witness the summer of 2020. If that’s not what you want, then you need to make your voice heard, too, in a host of ways…but staying home as a protest is not using your voice. It’s choosing to be complicit and compliant.

And that’s again what those in control…the two major parties…are counting on. After all, remaining in control is the one thing they can agree on.

 

News/Talk 1540 KXEL · Iowa Politics — Tue. Aug. 11, 2020